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I spent my first few months of college questioning my dalit colleague for her scepticism towards UC allies. I mean, here I was experiencing city culture for the first time and there they were with their big words and stories of activism. Safe to say I was at awe of how they
carried themselves. It all came crashing down as I became more political than signing petitions. I saw how their stories of activism were not their stories of activism. How their words were just that, words. I saw them very 'politely' limit minority participation to crowds.
Gaslight people from marginalised community with those very big words. NE was only ever brought up over Chai and sutta. And even then all they wanted to talk about was AFSPA and how cruel the army is. I wanted to talk about environmental destruction, tribal representation,
dominant hegemony, colonialism, cultural dilution, ethnic conflicts, border issues, reservation, racism, language politics... but they simply never had time for this. If I had a penny for everytime a woke boi thought I'd be cool with casual sex because NE girls are chill like
that, I'd have savings. It was in my college 2rd year that I stood up for my colleague for the first time when they were gaslighting her about caste politics. They didn't know what to say to me because they just didn't know enough about where I come from to concoct their theories
of self victimisation or how I didn't know what my experience should tell me. Using ethnofascist to deligitimise our concern and voices is a relatively new thing, it didn't exist back then.
While I still struggle to find a space for myself in mainland political discourse given how all ideologies are always exclusive of NE, however I want to shout out to Bahujan circle made pre dominantly of south indians for being the most accepting towards my politics.
